Tag Archives: NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center

L-84, a 25-year-old male killer whale named Nyssa, continues to
transmit his location and that of his traveling companions who keep
moving north and south along the West Coast, going as far south as
Eureka, California.

Here’s a quick update, going back to when the orca was first
tagged:

K-pod and L-pod whales cross
the California border before turning back this week. // NOAA
map

A satellite transmitter was attached to L-84 on Feb. 17 by
researchers from NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center during a
research cruise focused on the Southern Resident whales. Since
then, the orca — often see with whales from K and L pods — moved
south past the Columbia River into Central Oregon before turning
back north on Feb. 21.

On Feb. 25, the researchers were following the whales in the
research vessel Bell M. Shimada off Westport in Washington when
another group of L pod whales showed up. It was at that time that a
new calf was spotted with L-94, a 20-year-old female named
Calypso.

The whales headed south and reached Tillamook Head in Northern
Oregon on Feb. 27, then they turned north and reached La Push in
Washington on March 1. For the next eight days, the whales moved
back and forth in the north-central areas of the Washington Coast
before moving south to Grays Harbor on March 12.

On March 13, they began an excursion to the south, reaching the
Columbia River on March 14, Cape Falcon on March 15, Depoe Bay on
March 16, Coos Bay on March 18, and the California border on March
20.

At that time, marine mammal researcher Jeff Jacobson, based in
Northern California, caught up with the whales and confirmed that K
pod and a portion of L pod remained with the tagged whale L-84. The
whales kept moving south to Cape Mendocino (south of Eureka,
Calif.) on March 22 (Sunday), before turning back north, reaching
the Rogue River (just north of the Oregon state line) on
Tuesday.

The tracking effort provides information about the whale’s
travels and where they may be catching fish. Work from research
vessels often involves collecting fecal samples and pieces of dead
fish to identify what the whales are eating during the winter and
early spring.

With less than a week remaining on the 21-day research cruise,
Brad Hanson and company sighted a newborn orca in L pod swimming in
coastal waters off Westport on Wednesday. The mother appears to be
L-94, a 20-year-old female named Calypso.

A newborn orca swims with its
mother L-94, Calypso, near the entrance to Grays Harbor on the
Washington Coast. The research vessel Bell M. Shimada can be seen
in the background.NOAA photo by Candice Emmons

The new calf is the third to be born to Southern Residents since
Christmas. That’s a nice turnaround, considering that no babies
were born in 2013 and 2014, except for the one born right at the
end of last year. Still, at least one more calf is needed to
surpass even the annual average over the past 10 years. To keep
this in perspective, six calves were born in 2010, though not all
survived.

“It is encouraging to see this (new calf), particularly in L
pod,” Brad told me in a phone call yesterday afternoon. Hanson is a
senior researcher for NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science
Center.

The current research cruise also has been among the most
exciting and productive since the effort began in 2004, he said.
The research vessel Bell M. Shimada was able to follow J pod up
into Canada’s Strait of Georgia before switching attention to K and
a portion of L pod, which then traveled down the coast of
Washington past the Columbia River into Central Oregon. Satellite
tags attached to males in the two groups helped the research team
stay with the animals. In past years, the whales have not always
been easy to find for observation and tracking.

So far, more fecal and scale samples were collected in 2013 than
this year, but that could still be surpassed. This was the first
time that all three pods have been observed in one year, and it was
the first time that researchers saw two groups of L pod whales
coming together in the open ocean.

“Both 2013 and this cruise were extremely productive,” Brad told
me. “We have been able to observe variability between pods as well
as variability between years.”

As I mentioned in
Water Ways on Tuesday, learning where the whales travel in
winter and what they are eating are essential elements for
extending legal protections to the coast as part of a new critical
habitat designation for the Southern Residents.

With unusually good weather and sea conditions for February, the
researchers have learned a great deal about the whales as well as
the conditions in which they live — including the presence of sea
birds and other marine life, the abundance of plankton and the
general oceanographic conditions, Brad noted.

“I would rather be lucky than good any day,” he said of the
fortuitous conditions that have made the trip so successful. See
NOAA’s
Facebook page for his latest written notes.

The two groups of L-pod whales apparently came together early
Wednesday about 15 miles off the coast near Westport. The whales
were tightly grouped together when Hanson and his crew approached
in a small Zodiac work boat.

“It looked like a bunch of females were all gathered up when we
saw this calf pop up,” Brad said. “It is really exciting. The calf
looks great.”

The young animal had the familiar orange tint of a newborn with
apparent fetal folds, which are folds of skin left from being in
the womb. It was probably no more than two days old and very
energetic, Brad said.

Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research said the baby in L
pod might not have been spotted so early in the year were it not of
the research cruise. L pod usually returns to Puget Sound in April
or May.

“Seeing these calves is great, but the question is: Will they
make it into summer,” Ken said in an interview with Tristan
Baurick, a reporter with the
Kitsap Sun (subscription).

Without winter observations, many orcas born during those months
— especially whales in K or L pods — might never be known, since
the mortality of young orcas is believed to be high.

As of this afternoon, the research vessel Shimada was off the
Long Beach Peninsula north of the Columbia River (presumably with
the whales). This is the general area where the orcas and their
observers have been moving about for the past day or so.

It’s all about the data when it comes to critical habitat for
the Southern Resident killer whales, or so they say.

Researchers with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center have
piled up a lot of data this year, which could be just what is
needed to expand the endangered orcas’ critical habitat from Puget
Sound and the inland waterways out to the open ocean along the West
Coast.

Movement of K and L pods along
the Oregon Coast from Friday to Monday. // NOAA
map

NOAA announced in
today’s Federal Register that the agency would consider
expanding critical habitat, as allowed by the Endangered Species
Act, and possibly make other changes to the designation over the
next two years. What is needed, the agency said, are more data.

On Dec. 28, a satellite transmitter was attached to J-27, a
24-year-old male named Blackberry, who was tracked as J pod moved
about from the Strait of Juan de Fuca up into the Strait of Georgia
until the tag came off on Feb. 15. The following day, a new
satellite tag was attached to L-84, a 25-year-old male named Nysso.
K and L pods were tracked out to the ocean and down the coast to
Oregon.

A research team led by Brad Hanson aboard the vessel Bell M.
Shimada has kept track of J pod, then K and L pods since leaving
Newport, Ore., on Feb. 11. According to the latest report from the
researchers, K and L pods traveled south last week to the Umpqua
River in Central Oregon, where they abruptly turned north on
Saturday.

The whales continued north on Sunday, sometimes 10 miles
offshore.

“We observed a lot of surface active behavior throughout the day
— lots of spy hops — and at one point we observed numerous whales
repeatedly breaching over a several-minute period,” according to
notes from the cruise.

The researchers observed no apparent foraging for several days
and the whales remained quiet, with the exception of a several-hour
period shortly after the breaching episode. As of yesterday
morning, they were still off the Oregon Coast and heading
north.

The tracking data and up-close observations from this year’s
cruise appear to fill in some major data gaps — especially for J
pod, whose winter movements were not well known, according to NOAA
researchers.

In 2012, the first tag deployed on the Southern Resident allowed
the researchers to track J pod, but only for three days before the
tag came off. In 2013, a tag on L-87, which frequently traveled
with J pod, provided 30 days of data about J pods movements in the
Salish Sea, particularly in the Strait of Georgia (where they spent
a lot of time this year).

Another tag in 2013 allowed K and L pods to be tracked along the
West Coast all the way to California.

Sightings from land and shore, along with acoustic recordings of
the whales also are included among recent findings.

We won’t know until 2017 if NOAA has amassed enough data to
expand the critical habitat to coastal regions, perhaps as far as
Northern California, as proposed in a petition filed in January of
last year by the Center for Biological Diversity. For the decision
announced today in the Federal Register, the data are not enough.
This is how it is stated in the notice:

“While data from new studies are available in our files and have
begun to address data gaps identified in the 2006 critical habitat
designation, considerable data collection and analysis needs to be
conducted to refine our understanding of the whales’ habitat use
and needs. Additional time will increase sample sizes and provide
the opportunity to conduct robust analyses.

“While we have been actively working on gathering and analyzing
data on coastal habitat use, these data and analyses are not yet
sufficiently developed to inform and propose revisions to critical
habitat as requested in the petition.”

In addition to the geographic areas covered by the killer
whales, the agency must identify the ‘‘physical or biological
features essential to the conservation of the species.’’ Such
features include food, water, air, light, minerals or other
nutritional requirements; cover or shelter; sites for breeding; and
habitats protected from disturbance.

Once specific areas are identified for protection, the agency
must make sure that the value of protection for the killer whales
outweighs the economic costs and effects on national security.

J pod crossed the Canadian border and came into Puget Sound over
this past weekend, allowing Brad Hanson and his fellow researchers
to meet up with whales.

Brad, of NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, was able to
locate the killer whales from a satellite transmitter attached to
J-27, a 24-year-old male named Blackberry.

As you can see from the chart, the whales swam south, then
turned back north near Vashon and Maury islands. The researchers
met up with them Saturday morning on their return trip past
Seattle’s Elliott Bay, according to an update on the
project’s website.

The newest baby in J pod, designated J-50, was spotted with
J-16, according to the report from Hanson and crew. Other reports
have indicated that J-36 was also nearby, so it appears that the
new calf’s mother still is not certain. Researchers agree that the
mom is either J-36, a 15-year-old orca named Alki, or else Alki’s
mother — 42-year-old J-16, named Slick.

The researchers collected scraps of fish left behind by the
orcas’ hunting activities. Fecal samples also were collected. Those
various samples will help determine what the whales were
eating.

Orca Network published photos taken by whale observers near
Edmonds north of Seattle as well as from Point No Point in North
Kitsap.

Yesterday, J pod headed out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The
map shows them at the entrance to the strait going toward the ocean
at 6:15 this morning.

Orca Network reports that K and L pods apparently headed into
Canada’s Strait of Georgia on Friday, as J pod moved into Puget
Sound. It sounds like the two pods missed each other. We’ll see if
they meet up in the next few days.

Meanwhile, at least one group of transient killer whales has
been exploring South Puget Sound for more than 50 days, according
to the Orca Network report. That’s a rare occurrence indeed. A
second group of transients has been around for much of that time as
well.

Fishermen fish for salmon
north of the Hood Canal bridge last week, while researchers say the
bridge could be an obstacle to the migration of young steelhead.
//Kitsap Sun photo by Larry
Steagall

I’ve often wondered if the Hood Canal bridge might be an
obstruction for killer whales, which could simply choose to back
away from the wall of floating pontoons, which are anchored to the
seabed by a confusing array of crisscrossing cables. Old-timers
have told me that orcas used to come into Hood Canal more
frequently before the bridge was built.

What I never considered seriously, however, was that the bridge
could be an obstacle for fish as well. In
Sunday’s Kitsap Sun, I wrote about recent findings from a
study tracking juvenile steelhead by means of implanted
acoustic transmitters. The study was conducted by researchers at
NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

The bottom line is that something is happening at the bridge,
where many of the transmitters either disappeared or winded up
staying in one place near the bridge, continuing to send out their
signals for weeks. The leading hypothesis is that seals or other
predators are eating the young steelhead, and some of the acoustic
tags are being digested and excreted near the bridge.

Why the bridge serves as an obstacle to steelhead remains
unclear. But other studies have suggested that steelhead swim near
the surface. As they move out of the canal, the fish may encounter
the bridge pontoons as a physical barrier, since the concrete
structures go down 12 feet underwater. Also, currents around the
pontoons could be a strange condition for the fish. If a young
steelhead slows down in the process, a harbor seal or other
predator could be waiting to take advantage of the situation.

We’ve all heard about sea lions capturing adult salmon by
hanging out at fish ladders at Seattle’s Ballard Locks in Seattle
or at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. Maybe the same thing is
happening at the Hood Canal bridge with smaller prey as the target
of the marine mammals.

I was also intrigued by an
analysis conducted by Tarang Khangaonkar, a researcher at
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Seattle. He told me that
in all the models of circulation in Puget Sound and Hood Canal, the
bridge tended to be ignored. Since the pontoons go down 12 feet,
the bridge disrupts the relatively thin low-salinity surface layer
moving out of Hood Canal.

Tarang calculates that the bridge could reduce the circulation
by 10 percent or more, which has serious implications, not just for
steelhead at the bridge but for the ecological health of all of
Hood Canal.

“We have to examine what the bridge is doing,” Tarang told me.
“It slows the entire system down. Water quality is maintained in
Puget Sound by the flushing effect, which flushes the system out
and maintains a balance. Our preliminary finding is that it could
slow down by about 10 percent. That effect is cumulative.”

The bridge, he said, could effectively create a more stagnant
body of water, where oxygen can become depleted. More study is
needed, he said.

Most of the folks I interviewed for this story agreed that the
first priority for further research was to see what is happening to
the steelhead — and possibly chinook and chum salmon — at the
bridge. Studies could focus on the fish, predators and currents at
the bridge.

The project is gaining support, but it could require a special
legislative appropriation of about $2 million.

A research project that involved tracking the travels of K pod
for more than three months in the Pacific Ocean apparently has
ended, as the transmitter seems to have run out of battery power,
according to research biologist Brad Hanson.

“This has been a phenomenal deployment,” Brad told me yesterday
after it appeared he had logged the final transmission from K-25.
“It has been a quantum leap forward for us in terms of
understanding what is going on.”

K-25 is a 22-year-old male orca who was implanted with a
satellite tag on Dec. 29. The battery was expected to last for
32,000 transmissions, and it actually reached about 35,000, said
Hanson of NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. No data
arrived yesterday during the normal transmission period.

The three months of satellite tracking data will be combined
with fecal and prey samples from a 10-day research cruise to serve
up a wealth of information about where the Southern Resident killer
whales go and what they eat during the early part of the year, Brad
said. Until now, this has been a major blank spot in the
understanding of these whales, he noted.

The information gathered over the past three months should prove
valuable in management efforts to protect and restore these orcas,
which are familiar to human residents of the Puget Sound region.
After the data are analyzed, federal officials should be able to
say whether they have enough information to expand “critical
habitat” into coastal areas for the endangered killer whales. If
not, we should know what additional information may be
required.

Brad says he feels a high level of anticipation from his fellow
killer whale experts who are eager to learn of the research
findings, especially the results of what the whales are eating.

“We have a tremendous amount of data, and we’re trying to push
it through as quickly as we can,” he said.

Brad says he won’t release the findings until the analysis is
further along. But he did dangle this intriguing tidbit in front of
me: The whales are NOT eating chinook salmon exclusively.

The tracking project has another benefit, Hanson said. It will
bring new meaning to more than three years of acoustic data
(recorded sounds) picked up by hydrophones dispersed along the
Washington Coast. Until now, it was not possible to determine the
locations of the whales from their sounds alone, because the sounds
could be picked up from many miles away. Now, thanks to tracking
data, the intensities of their calls and echolocation clicks can be
correlated with distance to a greater extent. Researchers are
developing a computer model to identify possible locations from as
much as seven years of hydrophone data in some places.

The tracking project began on Dec. 29, when K-25, named Scoter,
was darted with a satellite tag near Southworth in Kitsap County.
K-25 and presumably the rest of K pod then moved out into the
ocean. Check out the tracks on NOAA’s
satellite tagging website.

“We were extremely lucky to get that tag at the end of the
season,” Hanson said.

It was K pod’s last trip into Puget Sound for several months, he
noted, and it is a real challenge to get close enough to dart a
killer whale, especially when only certain ones are candidates for
the tag.

By Jan. 13, the whales had reached Northern California, where
they continued south, then turned around at Point Reyes north of
San Francisco Bay. They continued to wander up and down the West
Coast, including Northern California, into early March. After that,
they began to stay mainly off the Washington Coast with trips into
northern Oregon. They seemed to focus much of their attention near
the Columbia River, where early runs of salmon may be mingling.

The research cruise, originally scheduled for three weeks, ran
from March 1 to March 10, cut short by the federal budget
sequestration. By following the whales, researchers were able to
collect 24 samples of prey (scales and/or tissues of fish) plus 21
fecal samples from the whales themselves. Shortly before the
cruise, K pod met up with L pod, probably off the Washington
Coast.

The ability to track the whales and the fortune of decent
weather were major factors in the success of the research cruise,
Brad said. In contrast, several previous cruises had netted only
two prey samples and no fecal samples.

“We are ecstatic about the amount of data we collected in such a
short period of time,” Brad told me. “If we would have had 21 days
instead of 10, just think what we could have done.”

Tagging the whales with a dart, which penetrates the skin, has
been controversial among whale observers. Some contend that we
already know that the whales spend time in the Pacific Ocean, and
maybe that’s enough.

But Brad says many detailed findings from the past three months
were never known before — such as how much time the whales spend
off the continental shelf and how much time they spend in and
around canyons at the edge of the shelf.

The sampling of fish scales and fish tissues should reveal not
only the species of fish, but also specific stocks of salmon as
well as their age, Brad said.

“Are they actually targeting the larger and older fish?” he
wondered. “Some fish are resident on the continental shelf. Are
they targeting those? Are they going after the ones they can easily
detect, which means not going after the smaller fish?”

The cruise also collected all kinds of information about the
ecosystem, ranging from ocean depths to zooplankton to the kinds of
birds seen in the area. All that information will feed into a
description of the essential habitat the whales need during their
winter travels.

During the cruise, another whale, L-88, a 20-year-old male named
Wave Walker, was tagged as an “insurance policy” to allow the
whales to be tracked if K-25’s transmitter failed. A shorter dart
was used on L-88, and the tag apparently fell off about a week
later.

The ocean environment is very different from Puget Sound, where
the habits of the whales are well known, Brad explained. In the San
Juan Islands, groups of whales are rarely far apart compared to the
scale of the ocean, he noted.

In the ocean, the orcas were generally grouped up during resting
periods. Sometimes Ks and Ls were together; other times they were
apart. When they were foraging, however, the individual animals
might be spread out for miles.

Brad said he expects to put the new information into some kind
of agency report, probably followed by a peer-reviewed journal
article.

“We have put a lot of time and effort to get to this point,” he
said, adding that the researchers feel a sense of accomplishment
now that the effort has paid off.

A research team led by Brad Hanson of NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries
Science Center has been tracking K and L pods off the coast of
Oregon and California, most recently offshore of Washington’s
Willapa Bay.

Satellite transmissions
from two killer whales, K-25 and L-88, show their pods crossing the
Columbia River this morning.Map by Robin Baird with NOAA data

The team left Newport, Ore., on Friday aboard the 209-foot
research vessel Bell M. Shimada. The crew caught up with K pod the
following day with the help of a satellite transmitter attached to
K-25, according to reports. Most if not all of L pod was seen
swimming with the K pod whales near Cape Blanco, off the southern
coast of Oregon.

The research team attached a new satellite tag to L-88, a
20-year-old male named Wave Walker. The new tag will provide
another method of following the whales if the tag attached to K-25
should fall off, as expected sooner or later. It has already stayed
attached for more than two months, about twice the average life of
the satellite tags.

I have not yet connected with Brad Hanson, but I talked to Robin
Baird of Cascadia Research, who has been getting reports from the
crew. Robin told me that the researchers have been able to obtain
multiple fecal and/or fish-scale samples on most of the days they
have been at sea.

Those samples will aid in meeting the primary goal of the
cruise, which is to figure out where the whales are going and what
they are eating during the winter months while away from Puget
Sound.

The satellite tags have allowed the research ship to stay with
the whales even when the weather and their lack of vocalizations
have made them hard to find, Robin said. As a result, this research
cruise has been more efficient than past ones in terms of both time
and fuel.

The research trip, which was scheduled for 21 days, will be cut
in half because of the federal spending cuts related to the
sequester, according to a statement issued by this afternoon by the
Northwest
Fisheries Science Center.

The travels of K-25 over the past two months are shown in an
animation produced by staff at Northwest Fisheries Science
Center. (In my browser, the north and sound portions of the map are
cut off even in full-screen view, but the movements shown are still
amazing.)

The latest report shows both tagged whales swimming offshore of
Willapa Bay on the Washington Coast, having crossed the Columbia
River mouth this morning. The full trip can be viewed on maps
posted on the website called
Southern Resident Killer Whale Satellite Tagging.

Researchers are tracking K
and L pods aboard the NOAA vessel Bell M. Shimada. Click on
the image and insert the ship’s name to view its recent travels.
/NOAA photo

Stormwater runoff from highways has been found to contain one or
more toxic compounds that can bring on sudden death in coho and
possibly other salmon as well.

Researchers Kate Macneale
(left) and Julann Spromberg place a coho salmon into a tub of
stormwater at Grover’s Creek Hatchery. Their studies have revealed
that urban stormwater can kill coho before they are able to
spawn.Photo: Tiffany Royal/Northwest Indian Fisheries
Commission

Researchers from NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center first
noticed the problem in Seattle’s Longfellow Creek, which gets a
high volume of stormwater when it rains. Returning adult coho were
dying in the stream before they could spawn.

The problem was confirmed last fall at Grover’s Creek Hatchery
in North Kitsap, where coho were placed into tanks containing
highway runoff. Even after days of rain, the runoff was deadly,
causing the fish to become disoriented and die within hours. This
was not a disease process but a severe physiological disruption of
the salmon’s metabolism.

On Monday, I reported on these dramatic new findings made by Nat
Scholz and his colleagues at NOAA. Since then, the story was picked
up by the Associated Press and has appeared in dozens of
publications and news digests across the country.

I won’t go into detail about the study here, because most of
what I know is the story. See
Kitsap Sun, Jan. 21. Toward the end, I describe some actions
that Kitsap County officials are taking to keep highway dirt and
debris from getting into local streams, even before the deadly
compounds are identified.

I’ll continue to follow this story as scientists try to narrow
down the list of possible toxic compounds that are causing the
problem. The next step will be to take clues from tissues removed
from the dying salmon at Grover’s Creek Hatchery.

Naturally, these new findings raise many questions about how the
unknown chemicals affect the fish so rapidly and where these
compounds come from. Could it be from automobile tires or exhaust,
or could it be something in the road material itself? Are certain
chemicals acting synergistically to heighten the problem? Answering
these questions could make a significant difference for urban
streams and possibly for rural streams as well.

Personally, I can’t help wondering about the salmon that
survive. It’s not easy to find a coho stream where highway runoff
does not contribute something to the flow. If these compounds can
kill a fish in concentrations found in stormwater, what are they
doing to fish exposed to lower concentrations? Are the salmon that
survive as successful in finding a mate and conducting their
spawning rituals as salmon not exposed at all?

I’m not sure where this line of research will lead, but the
early implications appear to be quite serious. On an optimistic
note, if the compounds can be identified, Washington state has a
reputation for reducing or eliminating toxic chemicals at the
source.

Numerous tests focused on a dead killer whale have so far failed
to determine whether the fatal injury was caused by an underwater
explosion or possibly a glancing blow, such as from a boat or even
another animal.

L-112 in happier times. The
3-year-old orca died in February, and her death is the subject of
an intense investigation.Photo by Jeanne Hyde, Whale of a Porpoise(Click on image to see Jeanne's tribute
page)

For the first time, all the key members on a committee studying
the death of L-112 got together last week. Their latest conclusions
were updated in a report released yesterday.

More tests on tissues taken from the injury site are planned,
even as the investigation continues into what human activities may
have been occurring in or near the Columbia River at the time of
L-112’s death.

The female orca was found dead at Long Beach on Feb. 11. For
information, check out my previous reports in Water Ways: